


Find Me in the Next Life

by AraniWrites



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Reincarnation, Religion, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraniWrites/pseuds/AraniWrites
Summary: An Asari and a Salarian are soulmates, and the Asari partner (Adene) finds her Salarian soulmate over and over again throughout her 1000 year lifespan.Based on a post from tumblr, which I will link below.





	Find Me in the Next Life

**Author's Note:**

> Original Post: http://princeof-flowers.tumblr.com/post/183714990808/i-wonder-if-like-a-common-trope-in-salarian
> 
> Permission to use this idea was granted by the OP.

Her mother tells her stories about the day they came. Salarians and Asari, two peoples in a vast galaxy who collide on a station far away. They coexist together, the only two in their world. No one suspected there’d be anything more.

They meet on a beach on a crossroads destination world, with twin moons rising each night above a quiet beach-town cove. She's only just hit eighty, and moves far from her family to find her own way. She works at a hotel overlooking the waves, and watches each sunrise to greet the next day. He wanders there with little to his name, with no direction and no one to miss. He's aimless and careless, granted no reasons to stay, yet he watches those waves and hopes he'll find his own path one day. They meet on the beach, laughter rings over the sand, pulled to each other by a sense they almost ignore. They learn beside the salty sea, and he never leaves their shores. 

They build a life together, for whatever time it's worth. A little house on the winding road, a deck with a view of the beach and a teapot whistling on the stove. He works as a teacher, cares for all his students. In the summer he hosts swim lessons, and cleans the sands in sunset hues. She jumps from job to job, trying to find her fit. He encourages each one, and they find no better bliss. For thirty years they live quietly, hands joined for every beat. Her family thinks she's crazy-- and perhaps, she thinks, they're right-- but he loves her like no other until the very day he dies. He holds her hand tightly as she cries for his name.

“Don't cry for me, my dear Adene. Find me in the next life.”

 

It’s another fifty years before she begins to understand his wish. Adene leaves that cove, taking to the stars before landing on the Citadel. Adene becomes a journalist, studying in a little college out of the way of the bustle of Presidium life. She loves to craft words with a fine-tuned scope, bringing knowledge to those who might seek it for their own. She soon finds a classmate who resonates in turn, a Salarian with passion and a longing for the sea. He’s a religious fellow, words his poems like a song. She finds herself enraptured by a laugh she swears she knows, and a smile that seems so much like her own.

He describes the Wheel of Life to her over a late-night study session. A Salarian religious concept, popular and coveted. Lives don’t ever end, they are simply remade— lifetime after lifetime, the soul grows and learns and changes. The way he says his words is so like the one she once loved, she begins to wonder if he’d returned to her, the soul she knew in a new body, to build another life with her and she to build with him. He marries her beneath twin moons on a salty ocean shore, and for thirty years they build a life together just as they had before. And when their time is up, he smiles and holds her true,

“I love you, my dear. Find me in the next life.”

 

It takes a few lifetimes for her to truly believe, but he returns to her faithfully when they happen to appear. She becomes an investigative journalist and travels their world, a galaxy of stories to put into words. Her travels lead her across council space, where she meets them again and again in different faces and names. First she’s a historian, keeper of vast knowledge. Then he’s a painter who illustrates her articles with fire and wit. He becomes a biologist, a neurologist, a comedian, a flower shop owner. She becomes a novelist, an archaeologist, a politician, a mercenary. And with each lifetime Adene writes a new article, privately stored in her most secure lock-box, detailing each and every lifetime she spends with her beloved soul. Amid her writings Adene can notice the tried and true traits; a smile that puts the sun to shame, a laugh which rings like silver glass, a sense of belonging unmatched by all others, and final words always repeated exactly the same.

“Find me, my dear. Find me in the next life.”

 

There are stretches of time where they miss each other entirely. She finds no resemblance, and moves on silently. Other lifetimes she knows her beloveds soul, but they’re taken, or occupied, or somewhere out of her own world. Some lifetimes they’re friends, drinks at the bar and tea on their days off, laughing about life and the twists and turns it takes. Other lifetimes Adene can only watch from afar; she has a clutch she soon leaves behind, then he’s caught up in breeding contracts so lengthy he can’t keep them straight, then she’s in politics again and can’t worry about relationships. So with each lifetime she waits, and waits, and trusts that she won’t wait forever. They’ll return to her, she knows, as they always had before.

He does return, as he always promised to do. A soldier of the Union, working to join his brothers in STG rankings. He never makes this goal, and instead finds peace— he sacrifices his life to save his soulmate’s own. Two lifetimes later he becomes rank Major in STG, and she writes his title diligently along the top of a weathered page. She becomes a cosmologist, an engineer, a geologist, and then a mother once more. He becomes a miner, a businessman, a musician. Knowledge accumulated and recorded in Adene’s notebooks, filling one lock-box before filling two more. And with each lifetime she trusts in one fact: she’ll find them in the next life and continue their path.

 

Adene ages well, respected in her field. Her articles are famous, award-winning and precise, credited for their detail and varied points of view. As the decades roll by she thanks each lifetime for their service, a new lens to learn from, a new lens to write with. She soon ends her career in the field and retires out west, her old bones beginning to creak and sigh and bend. Somehow, even through her slowing pace, he finds her again in good faith. She continues to record until she can no longer hold her pen, and finally she finds peace sunk down into her bed.

Her beloved sits beside her, holding tightly to her hand. He’d been faithful so long, and would see her through to her end. Adene smiles at him with the love she’d never lost,

“I love you, my soul. Find me in the next life.”

 

He finds her writings not long after she’s gone. Ten lock-boxes left, and a key only he holds. She’s assembled them all into books of records and memories, and he reads through each one with curiosity and longing. Pages dance under her skillful hand, with pictures her love once drew and photographs to confirm. He thinks it almost crazy, if not for the itch— a flash of light here, a feeling of bliss there, the mounting thought that maybe, just maybe, everything she wrote of was familiar and warm. Finally, at the end, he finds her secret will, and sets out on a journey to complete her final wish.

Her will describes a beach on a once destined world, with twin moons rising over a snowy, hollow cove. The town was abandoned some hundred years ago, and plant life consumes wherever it's allowed to grow. Snow falls on the sands as he finds a beaten path, a path he wonders if he'd ever seen before.

There's a hotel on the shore, broken and torn. The roof has caved in, water laps at it's doors. Yet through the snow he steps up to the shore, and holds her ashes close to his core. He doesn't need a sign to know where to go; he's been here before, and he knows that this was home. With her request on his mind, he pours her ashes onto the shore. Waves wash them away, taking her out to the deep, quiet blue. 

“Goodbye, my dear Adene. I'll find you in the next life.”

 

They meet when they’re young, adventurous and bold, on a sunlit beach of white sands and shoals. There’s a moment they see it, realize the pull— the sense that they know one another from some previous unknown shore. They may not ever know if their senses are true, but they love each other anyway under peaceful sunset hues.


End file.
